hilarious.

In somewhat related news, Arrested Development is going to get a new season on FOX as a way to lead into the movie which is currently being hammered out, and most recently Netflix has signed a deal to start producing new episodes in 2013. I'm not sure if that includes the season that's supposed to lead up to the movie, or if the deal will be for additional shows.

Netflix had previously stated that they were going to look into producing shows and possibly movies for their service. It would be interesting to see how well they do, or if they plan on creating new series or just set up deals to produce some of these cult-popular shows from other networks.

I would think that the web would be an ideal format for series. You wouldn't have to worry about pacing for commercial breaks, you could go as short or long as you wanted, etc. I remember when I first heard about Channel 101 and I thought it was an awesome idea and would be 'the future' of internet media distribution. Turns out it was mostly teenagers shooting bad comedy shows in their backyards. It would appear that their latest shows are a bit better produced, tho it still looks like it's mostly comedy oriented. Such a waste of an idea.

The new episodes of Arrested Development won't be on Fox, or any other network, just Netflix.   So it is an example of what you're talking about.

That might appear to mean that what we said in this Intermission episode - that there's not enough money in internet distibution to pay for network-level product - is already wrong. But in our defense, we did point out that this is an ongoing thing, and budgets for internet projects are getting bigger all the time.

And I suspect that the budgets for these new episodes won't be nearly as high as they were for the original run.  The show's producers are using the new mini-season as a run-up to a feature version, so I betcha they're taking a bit of a pay cut in hopes of getting their real payback with a hit movie later.  They're already hinting that each episode will focus on one cast member - which is a good way to keep costs down. 

And it makes sense for Netflix to use that show as an experiment, because AD already has an existing fanbase.  Not big enough to interest a network... but if Netflix can get new episodes for a reasonable price, it might be quite successful for them.  Obviously Netflix already has plenty of data on how well AD episodes do on DVD and streaming, since they're one of the companies that's been doing the renting and streaming.

So, although it'll be a while before an online venue greenlights something on the scale of a Terra Nova, or even a Firefly, we might start seeing them pick up other established lower-budget shows like... well, Community, if NBC does decide to drop that one. 

It's actually a very interesting time - even though right now you still need the brand name of a show like AD, or a big star name, like Netflix's other experiment, with an original Kevin Spacey series  - to get a web outlet to risk spending real money... it IS starting to happen.

I'm afraid so, yeah... Sorry about that. Not my intention. Should you wish to express your point to them directly, their email address is slashfilmcastATgmailDOTcom. Additionally, there's also Twitter:

David Chen: @davechensky
Devindra Hardawar: @devindra
Adam Quigley: @alwayswatching

Despite this particular disagreement, they're a really fun, approachable group. I don't know, maybe you could be a guest on their show. I'm sure they would enjoy talking to you. After all, if they can have Armond White on their podcast not once, but twice, I'm sure your appearance would be just fine.

EDITED TO ADD: Really? I've only read the first paragraph so far. Strange. Maybe they've not listened to the episode proper and just going off what I've quoted you from these forums. Either way, the title of the article at least seems to suggest that yes, this is a rebuttal, saying the system doesn't work.

EDITED TO FURTHER ADD: I guess I spoke too soon where I shouldn't have:
"Grossly misinterpreting one of our hosts' points-of-views = not likely to cause me to invite you onto the show :-/

-David"

Apparently in an alternate universe, I was disinvited from a podcast I wasn't aware of, because I've disgruntled the hosts in an argument I didn't know I was having. 

Here in the real world, it's raining.

LOL! That's double-funny because it's raining HERE too!